Hitchhikers May be Escaping Convicts
by ScullysNudes
Summary: The year is 2551. The Initiative is scattered across the galaxy, trapped between a desperate UNSC and a near-victorious Covenant; the same alien alliance which seeks to dominate or destroy any new species it encounters. Sara Ryder, though but a young woman, cannot afford to falter once the fate of 100,000 innocent lives is thrust upon her shoulders.
1. Warning!

**0558 Hours, February 21, 2551 (Military Calendar) \ UNSC vessel** _ **Boomerang**_ **, Gunnhild System, 24 Hours from Laxardal.**

Blast doors lowered over the windows of the _Boomerang_ 's bridge, locking into place with a firm thud. The light of space, of myriad stars, vanished. Only artificial red remained, casting dull shadows across the hard edges of bridge machinery. Monitors set into walls and thick consoles emitted the faintest of greens, barely visible beyond a metre and illuminating only beleaguered men and women.

The crew sat quietly, hunched over in their chairs, eyes dark and drooping with fatigue. Fingers clacked against keyboards, whispers parted lips as officers exchanged information to one another. Nobody paid attention to the darkening of the room. Their eyes were fixed on their screens. Their Captain walked amongst them, squeezing through the narrow gaps between stations, leaning over shoulders to inspect work or pass his comment. The top of his head barely skimmed under the low ceiling.

He came to a stop behind the overworked navigation officer and rested a hand on the man's shoulder. The officer jerked in surprise, then gazed expectantly up at the Captain. Receiving only a strong nod in reply, he returned to his eyes to his station, wearily but tirelessly adjusting course and watching for updates from the systems officer. The Captain watched too, with grim intensity.

Numbers, calculations, coordinates, maps and grids were all strewn around the screen in an organised madness which only a trained operator could understand. Having once been in the same position as the young man before him, the Captain understood the chaos, though some software had changed in the decade since he gained his own command. But it was not the system itself which interested the Captain. It was what it described.

Two kilometres directly ahead of the _Boomerang_ a much larger ship lazily sailed through space. Two kilometres - a dangerous distance in such a situation. The unknown vessel possessed massive engines which washed the smaller ship in waste heat and propellant. The _Boomerang_ could take it, of course, but only just. Any closer and delicates would begin to suffer.

It was a risky tactic. Any sudden decelerations could catch the _Boomerang_ off guard and risk an impact. And although no weapon systems could be detected, its size must have warranted at least some defensive measures. But the advantages of the position were undeniable. By placing herself directly at the ship's aft, the _Boomerang_ could hide like an ancient submarine, despite not being designed for stealth. There was too much interference from the charged particles behind the unknown ship, and no cameras or windows which would be able to spot them.

A week earlier, having found the mystery ship, intercepted, and reported inactivity, the Captain had received orders directing him to send regular reports to Sector HQ and quietly skulk until reinforcements arrived from Reach. The order had unnerved the crew. They were dealing with an unknown factor, a high-tonnage starship of unknown intent and capability. The only thing staving off worse worries were the double shifts every sailor pulled on their undermanned destroyer. When the mystery ship had finally powered up and began moving, SHQ ordered them to stalk it, persistent and silent.

Whereas intent was clouded, destination was as clear as day. The unknown was on a flat course for high orbit over the system's only colony world, Laxardal. Moving at low speed, with no reconnaissance pickets or escorts, nor with any active scanning, it had been easily hoodwinked by the _Boomerang_ , and could have been by all but the biggest of UNSC ships.

But now, the deception was to be revealed.

The Captain laid his left hand on the systems officer's shoulder, and squeezed on both her's and the navigation officer's. "Lieutenants. You see the shutters?"

Both looked up from their consoles and then back to their Captain, standing tall in the space between them. "Aye Captain."

"Good. We have new orders: battlestations. We engage in twelve hours."

* * *

The entire crew complement was awake. Cryopods had been busted open, security details assigned in case of boarding action. Spare Archer missiles were seen to by mechanics after a long haul in storage, the MAC system all the while undergoing torturous calibration and testing. Snacks were given out to keep up crew strength, with orders to eat whenever possible. The tiny, dark bridge had come to life, junior officers taking the extra stations and aiding with every possible function. The reactor, though not needed at full power yet, was kept hot and running at 95%. The Captain wanted it warmed up and ready for use at full power and, if necessary, at the redline.

Though twelve hours was a long time to wait, adrenaline ran high. The sheer anticipation of an engagement after months spent on routine patrol (or in the freezer) kept every sailor on their toes, if nervous. Even the Captain was keen to see action, though he had wished he had some hours more to prepare. Neither human nor dumb AI had managed to find a way into the other ship's electronic systems, though they had, as far as anyone could tell, managed to mask their attempts to any hostile intelligences.

Finally, the timer struck t+11.50. The Captain pushed himself away from the bridge's main display, from the overviews, images and reports which had held his attention all day.

He squeezed past the two lieutenants and sat behind and between them, in his own chair. The hot seat, as it was called by most UNSC captains. It had its own command module, screen, and holographic projector held within the armrests, but at such expense that apparently the UNSC skimped on any padding. Utility over comfort, as usual.

The Captain nodded to a middle-aged blonde woman, the ship's 2IC, who had watched him since he made his way to the chair. She approached and stood at his side. She saluted, and he nodded. "Commander."

"Captain."

"Anything to report?"

"Nothing Captain. The _Boomerang_ is as ready as we can get her. I wish HQ had sent the orders sooner though." Consternation panged across her face.

"As do I. We must make do though." The Captain looked around the bridge one last time, taking in the sight of a healthy crew, albeit tired. With so many ships, including the _Boomerang_ , being run on skeleton crews, they were lucky to have had any time at all to prepare in advance and maximise use of their manpower.

"Commander," the Captain continued. "I think it's time. Eight minutes to go. Lock down the bridge. Put the rest of the ship on redlight and alert the crew that we are taking up final battlestations. They are to get to brace areas. Ready unoccupied compartments for emergency depressurisation. And the crew - they have already stowed excess munitions, correct?"

The Commander briefly checked her tablet, being fed reports directly from the system officer. "Aye Captain."

"Good. Then you may give the orders."

As she did so on the PA system, the Captain swivelled on his chair to the right, looking at the back of his weapons officer. "Weapons station."

The haggard man turned to his Captain. Though his mouth was already agape to say something, he was cut off with rapid fire orders. "I need three separate firing solutions Lieutenant. Solution one will be a warning shot: fire a single missile from Archer pod A to the port side of the unknown vessel, guide it to and past the sensor array on their nose. Fire when the timer reaches twelve hours. Solution two: the remaining missiles from Archer pod A, and then pods B to F, will fire and impact on the closest of the four extended arms. Slave the execute command to the hot seat"

The Captain turned to his left and caught the attention of his navigation officer. "You two will need to make the final firing solution together. In case we cannot disable the ship and they do not surrender, or they already have their shields up, then we will need to destroy it outright. In case that happens, I want the nose of the _Boomerang_ opposite theirs, while matching speed. I want our ship also doing a full 360-degree roll every 20 seconds. We will be fighting backwards. You will then fire a four-round MAC salvo down the spine of their ship. Use M160KG, 100% charge. That should give five seconds between each round. Prepare a single H600KG, to at least 70% charge, in case the first four do not finish the job. Simultaneously arm and fire Archer pods G to L, aiming…"

He pointed to the rudimentary schematic on the bridge viewscreen.

"At the spherical section marked R5. If none of that can destroy the target, we'll consider fighting on or fleeing. Get to it gentlemen. Six minutes. I want the MACs charged by then." He had left it late, but of course with a MAC gun that was required. Holding a charge too long would have both risked damaging the coil machinery, and robbed the crew of precious preparation time on the double-barrel cannon.

The Lieutenants gave their aye ayes and furiously typed and talked. The Captain trusted that despite their fatigue these men could properly do what was required. If not, the dumb AI would be watching and correcting any glaring errors. That solution two, only a minute later, was ready and waiting for the execute command was promising.

Solution three made the Captain nervous, however. It was intended to stop the enemy from kicking their engines into overdrive once they realised they were being tracked from the rear, and thus would prevent them from doing major damage to the _Boomerang_. However, if there were hidden weapons systems on the nose or flanks of the ship, the _Boomerang_ could well be easily destroyed. Hence the spinning, to dissipate as much damage as possible around the relatively thick armour. Armour, after all, could be replaced easily and quickly. What was underneath could not.

But the Captain saw no other way of attacking the ship from such proximity while giving the option for surrender, as he had been ordered. Had he simply been told to engage and destroy, he could have fired everything directly into the engine block in a single surprise attack. Though he did not know the origin or make of this vessel, that any known Covenant warship of similar tonnage would be destroyed by the planned salvo would have encouraged him.

The Captain gripped the edges of his armrests. Two minutes remaining.

"Systems officer." She turned to him. "We are engaging momentarily. Prepare a demand to surrender, hail it after the first firing solution executes. Warn them they will be fired upon if they refuse. Now patch me into the PA system. Shipwide."

"Aye Captain." She hit some keys and then began prerecording the Captain's demand.

Reaching back to the top of the hot seat, the Captain pulled a headset with one earpiece and a microphone off it. He held it to his mouth, cleared his throat, then keyed a switch on the hot seat. "Attention crew, this is the Captain. We are engaging the enemy in t-minus 80 seconds. We will give them the opportunity to surrender, so prepare to stick around the area longer if they accept. Damage control stand by. Over." He looked back at the system officer. "Lieutenant, put the fore camera feed on screen, start an active scan of the vessel once we're out of their baffles."

The reports he had so thoroughly read vanished, replaced by the blue of their target's engines, dimmed so as not to flood the dark bridge with light.

He let the headset fall around his neck. The bridge stilled, the crew sat silent. Men and women throughout the ship ran to their final stations and waited nervously, those who could switching through camera feeds on their nearest monitors. For a moment, there was little to do but wait. Some had experienced similar moments before - the uncommon engagement where there was no terrible rush or frenzy as enemy ships materialised in front of their eyes, but merely the surreal stillness of knowing that battle was to commence at the exact second, on their own terms.

Twelve hours had passed.

The Captain briefly worried that they may have been known this whole time, the target merely playing with them. Too late to do anything about it though.

Missile One automatically fired, going portside and then beyond view for a moment until it streaked past the starboard side of the enemy vessel.

"Systems, send the hail. Navigation, begin the manoeuvre for solution three. Weapons, recheck solution two and arm pods B through F."

The bridge remained quiet, other than the usual aye ayes. Fingers, however, returned to furiously clacking. The weapons officer confirmed solution two. The _Boomerang_ drifted port and alongside the larger vessel, following the same path as the missile but both turning and spinning on its axis.

"No response to the hail sir."

"Roger. Executing solution two." The Captain tapped a command on his armrest, and a series of thumps sounded as the missiles, some located close to the bridge, blasted clear of their pods and raced to the nearest of the four outstretched arms on the enemy vessel. The viewscreen changed to a portside camera feed and watched 155 missiles race to their target in almost the blink of an eye. The rear half detonated just before impact while the fore half continued on a split-second more and detonated successfully. "Systems?" the Captain demanded.

She responded instantly. "Captain, active scans registered an energy spike as the missiles failed. They must have activated energy shields."

"Too late though," interjected the weapons officer. "Successful Archers have effectively disabled the arm. Jesus, nearly shorn it clean off."

"He's correct Captain, arm has totally powered down. There's significant damage to the surrounding superstructure on the main body of the vessel. Shall I hail again?"

The Captain watched as the enemy vessel started to sporadically lose power in some of the sections connected to the now defunct limb. "Yes. Hail again, warn them the next shots will be with intent to destroy. They will have 10 seconds to signal compliance from time of receival. Switch to fore camera feed." He turned to the weapons officer. "Lieutenant, exactly ten seconds from that time, execute solution three. Arm pods."

More aye ayes. Systems recorded the new demand, and simultaneously wrote a text variant, just in case they were dealing with aliens. "Navigation, are we in position?"

"Three seconds to manoeuvre completion Captain, currently decelerating."

"Good." They were taking a risk, leaving seven seconds between reaching firing position and actually unleashing. Damn the orders, the Captain thought. But he would follow them.

On the camera feed they saw the _Boomerang_ 's nose moving only slightly, while they felt with their whole bodies the aft section of the vessel swinging into position, so that the two ships would be spine to spine. Inertial dampeners did not remove all sensation of movement.

A disorienting rotation also made some avert their eyes from the camera feed lest they feel sick. The Captain did not begrudge them. Space was not, by any means, a place which the human brain had evolved to understand like it could the sea, or solid ground.

The thrum of the charged dual-MAC was audible under their feet. Systems spoke again. "Captain, we have received a response. Plain English, unencrypted: they are complying."

The message surprised the Captain. When he had seen energy shields activating he had assumed it was an alien vessel, and alien vessels never, _ever_ surrendered to the UNSC. Either he had got lucky and found the only one to ever do so, or he had just found human beings who had mastered a technology that the Navy could only dream of possessing. Either way, the realisation came across him that with this single, quick, almost pedestrian encounter, the _Boomerang_ may have just made a noticeable impact on the war effort.

"Understood…"

"Captain?"

"One moment systems…"

* * *

Notes: This is the first piece of fiction I have written since school, four score and many more moons ago. Please leave constructive criticism if you enjoyed it, think there is somewhere I could improve, or any reason otherwise. I am already aware that my dialogue could use work.


	2. You (do not) have the Right to:

**1909 Hours, February 21, 2551 (Military Calendar) \ A.I. shuttlecraft, Gunnhild System, 12 Hours from Laxardal.**

Nursing the bandaged gash on her forehead, Sara sat expressionless, a thousand-yard stare passing through her father. He took no notice of her, or tried not to anyway. They had lost the other two Ryders only an hour ago. Neither wanted to believe it. The total cessation of thought or interaction with reality was their reprieve from the pain.

That Sara's father had not said anything about their mother being with them, stowed away… too painful to think of, Sara.

The shuttle pilot let out an almost explosive sigh. He had not the luxury of closing off his mind, but instead focused on the cruiser they passed under. For some reason the raiding ship refused to stop spinning on its axis, and that made docking with the relatively small shuttle bay, located just ahead of and under the engine block, needlessly obnoxious.

Nearby, a large green shuttle craft sat relatively motionless in space. The raider's hangar was so small it quite literally could only fit two boats inside at a time, and it already seemed at full capacity.

The pilot flipped a switch on the console, and Sara snapped back to reality. Funny what gets your attention, she thought glumly. "UNSC DD-993, requesting docking guidance, over," spoke the pilot. There was some audible feedback before he signed off and began the manoeuvre.

Sara got up and shifted to the cockpit, watching from above the pilot. Their shuttle now appeared still, having matched its rotation with the starship. It slowly raised (or descended, for space is entirely as you orient it) into the bowels of the ship. A mechanical arm gripped the side of their shuttle once they reached the ceiling, holding them still. The blast doors closed beneath them.

The pilot looked around the hangar. "Cosy." Sara may have made a similar joke another time. Not then.

"Shuttle craft, be aware you are now being pressurised. Do not exit until all-clear is given, over."

"Copy, over."

Sara listened in and thought of how much the controller sounded like any typical Alliance or Council dockyard worker. So normal. Not at all the voice of destruction. It was unnerving.

After a brief moment, there was a hiss outside the hull and the ceiling above them opened up. They had been in a massive airlock apparently. The mechanical arm raised them to the main room, where they were shifted to another arm as the first returned to the airlock, which finally closed and formed a solid floor beneath them.

The hangar was far more complete than the bare airlock below. The pilot, for one, felt a little embarrassed for not immediately realising it had essentially been an antechamber. The real hangar: random crates, assorted tools, wall-mounted equipment, another massive shuttlecraft, a few armed marines in green fatigues. Sara could well have been on any ship in the world. The only difference was the utterly utilitarian aesthetic. It was ugly, even unpainted in some areas.

"Come on, let's go get this over with." Sara turned to see the speaker, Addison. Temporary director of colonial affairs. A very temporary director if things went poorly in the next minutes and hours.

All but slamming the button that unlatched the shuttle door, Addison emerged into the chilly air on the enemy raider. Sara looked once at her father, who did not look back. She followed Addison outside, followed in turn by the estranged dad.

Marines, weapons raised, wearily approached. Their fingers lay ever so slightly off of their triggers. Evidently, they did not want or expect a fight. A tall blonde in a smart white uniform followed behind them. She spoke in a thick accent Ryder could not place: "Please cooperate and allow a pat-down, we must search you for weapons."

"We followed your demands," Addison protested.

"I'm sure you did," the lady replied. "But we must have proof. Please." She nodded to her marines.

They advanced again, this time with purpose and speed. Two flanked the Initiative crew, another two slung their rifles around their shoulders and got to work on the patting. First on the Ryder escorts, then on Addison. To their credit, they did their best not to intrude too brusquely. Once satisfied, they moved back to their CO.

"Great, I may officially welcome you aboard the humble _Boomerang_. Follow me now."

Grimly, Sara lampooned the 'warm welcome' under her breath. She thought one of the marines may have heard as she walked by him, by the slight jerk of his head. Had she been any braver, or dumber, she may have smacked shoulders with him. Of course, she recognised four well-armed men could quite quickly cut her down if they wanted.

Then again, she was also too engrossed in thought to act. Everyone had assumed they had been targeted by a raiding ship. But, as was becoming clearer by the moment, as they passed random personnel throughout the ship, saw more areas, and after their introduction – this seemed more and more like a professional Navy than any kind of pirate outfit Sara had ever seen or heard of. In a rare moment of attempted cooperation, she looked to her father for guidance but received none. His eyes lay straight ahead, empty of expression or awareness.

Sara knew that, soon enough, when emotions were exhausted, and fatigue set in, she too would feel the full impact of the day's events.

Once off an elevator (going up), they were led by the blonde to a small, unassuming room. There sat two chairs around an exceedingly small table. Two schoolkids on a play date would have had trouble fitting little food-shaped plastics on it.

"Sorry about the size, this is a warship. No comforts allowed, right?" The woman smiled, trying to make a joke. It brought no smiles to their faces. More than three dozen had died in the moments following the attack. "Please, sit Miss." Addison sat, the nameless blonde sat opposite. The Ryders stood behind their director, and two of the marines, armed with SMGs, leaned against the wall behind their own CO. Sara was beginning to doubt if her father would be effective in even recognising an impending firefight. He was just going through the motions.

What followed were three gruelling, escalating, and hostile hours of questioning. After the first, names began to fly. Slurs directed towards Swedes continued even after their mystery interrogator informed Addison she was a Finn. Accusations of psychosis. Sara threw a few insults and criticisms in too, though at both Addison and the mystery woman. By the end, all three were in a foul mood. Sara, otherwise unexperienced with the director to that point, had decided she did not like the woman one bit. Though Sara was obviously contributing to the problem, if Addison hadn't been so pig-headed towards the blonde the Initiative may have got a better deal in the end.

The Marines had sat there smirking the whole time, but for once (prudes), interested, but otherwise silent. Sara's father had stood expressionless, not once speaking up. So forgotten was he, nobody even addressed or mentioned him.

The information gleaned by the UNSCN personnel, however, was considerable. Sara did not know what knowledge of great import the blonde had gathered, but she could infer from the questions asked that there was a great deal of interest in where exactly the Initiative was from, and specifically about the technology on the _Hyperion_.

That total confusion was the Finn's response to Addison's statement that the Initiative was from the Milky Way equally confused Sara. The blonde had said no more on the topic after that little tidbit, but something about her reaction… Sara was worried. Had they somehow ended up back in the Milky Way? There _were_ other humans here. And, after all, it was physically impossible for the Nexus or the other Arks to have arrived so far in advance of the _Hyperion_ that they could have established a society capable of building warships that _also_ did not remember there was another Ark out there.

Further explanation of the Initiative, about its intent to explore and settle the Andromeda galaxy, only further grew the consternation of their interrogator, no matter how much she tried to hide it.

Worrying indeed, Sara thought to herself.

Still, Sara had learned about their interrogator. She worked for the UNSCN, a human-only Naval force. This was a standard 'destroyer' type ship, essentially analogous to the role of a cruiser as Sara knew it. When she asked why the _Hyperion_ had been attacked, she had been told it was classified, for the moment. No amount of bribing had swayed the interrogator either. Yet more evidence of a truly professional outfit.

There was also a little black-white pyramid on top of the sheet of paper the blonde was reading question from (though she clearly asked some of her own intuition and curiosity). Underneath was written 'ONI,' and in a circle around the insignia, 'SEMPER VIGILANS'. _Ominous_.

The only thing Sara hadn't received any direct reply to was the question of the name of her mystery woman. She had merely received some kind of knowing look. Even the three gold bars and a gold star on her white jacket did not correlate to the ranks that Sara knew and used.

In the end, the blonde closed her folder on the insignia-stamped papers and left the room with her Marines. Perhaps she simply could not get anything useful from the now well and truly pissed prisoners.

Addison turned to Sara once it was just them and Sara's basically absentee father left in the room. He had not seemed to react at all since the deaths. Sara had been, for the most part, distracted from those thoughts since the end of their shuttle ride. Thankfully.

"Nice to see _you_ taking sides," Addison remarked. Bitch that she is, thought Sara.

"Sides? As if. For all I know she was the one with the finger on the button."

"Didn't stop you two from ganging up on me."

"Don't get bitter, I was just standing up to stupidity." Sara was getting riled again.

"Stupidity? Really? Coming from _you_..."

"What would you call it? Going and calling her names like that is the reason we're now officially under arrest. Great fuckin' 'deal' by the way. Good job. I'm sure the guys on the _Hyperion_ will be so pleased to hear that-"

"Like you did anything to calm the situation. I recall it was you who accused her of being a 'total psycho'."

"Yeah, right after she ignored that part when you told her how many died and she brushed it off."

"Ah, so it's okay when you do it, Ryder? You can say no wrong?" Addison remarked smugly.

"Fuck off." Sara paused to think in the silent moment between the two. "This is your fault."

"Remember who's in charge here."

"You above criticism too now?"

"No, but I don't have to take it from you."

"Actually, you do. As far as I'm aware prison is where the strongest reign, and I-"

"Shut up. Both of you." Father Ryder finally spoke. "Why don't you show some goddamn decorum. And brains. They are probably listening right now."

Addison looked up at the ceiling, sighing, tired. Sara looked disdainfully at her. Day seven in Andromeda (maybe), she made a note to herself. Family dead. Father physically there but nobody home, except when he wants to put me down, as usual. Ship gutted internally. Under arrest. Made enemies with one of the guys in charge. Good start.

* * *

Liam Kosta looked outside the window of an utterly average hallway on the Nexus and saw an utterly unaverage sight outside. Two massive warships, the most enormous he had ever seen, were sitting just a few kilometres away. Each was designated with the word MARATHON, then followed by UNSCN CA-70 CANBERRA (on the closest), and UNSCN CA-82 FEELING LUCKY (on the farther). Dozens of smaller ships marked HALBERD darted around on patrol, the exact same class as that which had ambushed them. More, of totally differently shapes, lazed around or joined patrols. They were marked CHARON, PARIS, or STALWART. Small dots of light, almost unnoticed amongst the blanket of stars save for the speed with which they moved, were fighter craft on escort or patrol duty. Massive fighter craft. Liam had seen one do a close pass. They were half as large as an Alliance frigate.

And if all this was what was in visible range, then there was going to be far more for at least a one million-kilometre diameter, if they had any tactical sense.

Evidently, the Initiative had stirred up a crisis, and this was the 'UNSCN's' response. Liam thought he could have done better. Certainly less lethal.

Dragging himself away from the window, he walked down the messy corridor. Scratches and scuffs, loose panels and instruments, littered it. When the initial blast had come, it wasn't so bad. A brief rumble in the distance. It had been the immediate aftermath that did the most damage to the rest of the ship. Power had immediately become intermittent. Some sections stopped pumping air automatically, others lost artificial gravity or, far worse, had their gravity go haywire, as had evidently happened here.

While the director, pathfinder, and their escort had left to negotiate an hour after the ambush, the rest hadn't even solved a single problem in the rest of the ship. All they could do was comply, begin deceleration until reaching a total halt, and deactivate their shielding. The _Hyperion_ was not a combat vessel, and probably could not hope to defeat DD-993 even if it had tried. They had been well and truly ambushed. Liam wasn't even aware of all the details considering both the chaos and the sheer speed with which they were brought to heel by the enemy. Nobody really knew what was happening.

Enemy. Not even a full week gone and already in a pickle. Liam was an optimistic fellow, in general, but even he could not deny that things were looking rough. Still, at least power was stable for the time being.

After a short walk, he reached the _Hyperion's_ CIC, ready to make his report. He found only a dark-skinned woman, and Cora Harper, who had assisted Liam with collecting the wounded in the immediate aftermath. The CIC had been utterly trashed, the fixings thrown about by gravity gone out of control. A few blood stains marked particularly hard edges. Liam had not been in the room until that moment, and could only hope the wounded had hit their limbs or torso, not their heads.

"Liam!" Cora called. She looked tired and… rattled was not the right word, but nervous nonetheless to Liam's eyes. "Nice to see a familiar face. This is Lani Reed, she's the _Hyperion_ 's pilot." As Liam approached he noticed the woman's arm was stiff and unnatural. A fresh wound too.

"Pleased to meet you." He shook her good arm. "You had that looked at?" Liam asked, motioning to the other.

"Yes, briefly. I'll manage on this, there are others who need more serious attention." She nodded to the blood stains.

"Shit."

"Indeed."

Cora looked to Liam, approached him. "Liam, we're in a situation."

"You don't have to tell me twice."

"No. A new one. We just got word from Addison, through the raider. We are surrendering the _Hyperion_. Outright."

"Outright? You mean…"

"Yeah, we're all under arrest apparently, or something. She wasn't so clear. We're to let a boarding party on once we can confirm gravity control is locked down and secure."

"Goddamn. I thought they went to negotiate."

"They did. Looks like things didn't go to plan. Now, we're considering our options."

Liam cocked his head. "What options? We don't have any shipboard weapons. Even if we did, have you seen the fleet they've got outside? I don't think having our asses turned inside out is how anybody wants to start this mission."

"Well, nobody wants to start it in a jail cell either, on who knows what charge for how long. You ever read _Gulag Archipelago_? It's real informative."

Liam sighed, deeply. A breath he had held unconsciously. Grim tidings indeed.

"Look Liam, I know this is brash, but we need to do something. If we don't, everyone on this ship has come 600 years just to end up looking at blank walls in a small cell, at best. We don't even have real leadership right now. You want to _really_ help?"

Shaking his head, knowing better, Liam acquiesced. "Yeah. What's the plan?"

"We're still getting the particulars ironed out, but we want to blast out of here at FTL, make our way to one of the other Ark locations."

"So, particulars is basically just… everything other than intent, so far," Lani interjected.

"Well," Liam started. "Let's get it figured out then. And the leadership, by the way? Their escort? The shuttle pilot?"

Lani looked to Cora. "They may have to get out of there on their own. They certainly were happy to leave us to the wolves."

* * *

Notes: You may notice a lack of SAM in this story so far. I think SAM is a terrible plot device, and has no place in story telling. As for little changes like Addison being present from moment one... I will take little liberties such as this every once in a while. It's fan fiction after all!

Needless to say, I am undertaking to make Sara far more likeable than she is in the game, while also being less of a doofus, while still being young and not quite as hard-boiled as Shepard or Master Chief. Likewise, worry not about Liam and Cora, and their ilk on the *Hyperion* (that is, worry not if you do not like them!). They are secondary to the time which Sara and the UNSC will receive. This is, in essence, a fish out of water story, and I think these stories work better with only one fish.


	3. First Echelon

**2245 Hours, February 21, 2551 (Military Calendar) \ UNSC vessel** _ **Canberra**_ **, Gunnhild System, 12 Hours from Laxardal.**

Joseph Harper yawned and leant his back against the _Canberra_ 's bridge wall. In the hours before, excitement had turned to tension had turned to boredom. Though the implications of his mission were not lost on the Fleet Admiral, he still found himself wishing he could delegate command of the operation to someone else. After decades of losing battles and wars, Harper suddenly found himself getting old and tired. He lazily blinked, watched the display at the room's far end.

The _Canberra_ was a massive ship, and its bridge, though not terribly tall, was long and wide. Many officers, junior and senior, not only operated the cruiser from there but further strategized with an entire fleet. They hustled and bustled, to and fro, interrupting or clearing past the Admiral's line of sight.

Such an environment (dark and gloomy as all UNSCN bridges were), combined with the old man's dreary eyes, made him give pause as the display seemed to change all of a sudden. Harper whispered to himself. "What in tarnation?" The _Hyperion_ could no longer be seen. The _Canberra_ 's AI desperately tried to track what had happened to it, and the sheer burst of activity on the display, amongst the various bridge officers, told Harper it wasn't just a glitch or a mistake.

A young man in uniform appeared at Harper's side. "Fleet Admiral! The _Hyperion_ \- "

"I know damn it. What happened?"

"I don't know Fleet Admiral. The systems department is reviewing logs."

Officers and yeomen all got out of Harper's way as he began to storm down the main aisle, directly toward the display. His tired eyes ignited all of a sudden. "Somebody put the last thirty seconds of portside camera feeds up here. Now!" Admiral Harper was not known for fury or temper, but it was there, and when it went all wrong that fury emerged like the Devil from Hell on his fiery chariot.

Almost instantly, the feeds were up. Multiple windows showing the large ship, simply sitting there. They watched. In the last fifteen seconds, the _Hyperion_ blasted away from the _Boomerang_ , its nose now clear. It had used air, compressed into hangar bays and then thrown out with the very sudden opening of the blast doors and airlocks. Probably there was some other form of propellant used in manoeuvring thrusters, Harper thought, something which could not be detected like an engine heating up could. Air alone could not have moved that ship all the way, not so quickly.

A split second after getting clear of DD-993, the _Hyperion_ all but vanished. All that could be seen was a brief split-second of elongation before it was gone.

 _They don't need slipspace to go FTL_ , Harper realised, thinking back to the scifi shows of his childhood. The idea of real-space FTL had always been in the public sphere, and always was theorised (if possible) to include the elongation effect he had just seen. _Our sensors were looking for the wrong readings – they weren't charging a slipspace drive_. Even if the fleet had had the right info, he wondered, would they have even known what it meant? Unlikely. _Bastards_.

"Griffin. Can we figure out their trajectory?"

A voice spoke into his earpiece, that of the _Canberra_ 's AI. "Unknown, Admiral. I'm trying, but without any previous precedent to-."

"Get on it. And get the _Boomerang_ 's Captain to interrogate the prisoners again, find out where their ship may have went."

"Yes Admiral."

Harper found the nearest seated officer. "You. Get the fastest ship in this fleet at the head of a W-1 Formation. Bring all other vessels back into line, get fighters in their hangars."

Harper looked back at the viewscreen, the cameras repeating the same thirty seconds endlessly. He didn't know if this FTL was as fast as the Covenant's, or even as fast as the UNSCN's. But if it was even a lightyear faster than their own, it would help in the war against the Covenant. Shields alone could help halt the indomitable tide of aliens. Technology was the reason the entire 5th Fleet was there that day, from Earth to Reach to Laxardal. There had been high hopes amongst the Fleet Admiral and his colleagues for the ease of and possibilities that could spring from this mission.

Harper was, understandably, disappointed, angry, frustrated. War-changing technology had been within his grasp. If the capture of that technology was delayed by even just a day, that was hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions dead who may have yet lived.

Slumping back against the wall, the Fleet Admiral grimaced. There would be no amnesty for the strange vessel. One way or another, 5th Fleet would get what it came for.

* * *

Note: Like the first two chapters, this and the fourth have been released together. I've decided to release two chapters at a time, more or less. This allows me to work on the story at a pace I enjoy.


	4. Don't Deal with the Devil

**2252 Hours, February 21, 2551 (Military Calendar) \ UNSC vessel** _ **Boomerang**_ **, Gunnhild System, 12 Hours from Laxardal.**

Clunk. A bowl of lemons, halved, fell onto the dimply lit table in the dark room.

"Keeps the scurvy away."

Sara whipped her eyes up to the table, pulled out of her inner thought. A lean man of average height, in the same white uniform and peaked cap as the Finn. He had all but thrown the metal bowl down. Leaning over, Sara grabbed a half and brought it above her, tipping her neck back ever so slightly. She paused.

"Are there seeds?"

"No."

"Hmm." Sara squeezed until there was only a peel, squeezed into itself. The lemon was good, though it made her mouth contort. She threw it back on the table, next to Addison, who stared at the leftover, almost entranced, her mind evidently elsewhere.

"No Finn this time?" Sara asked, glib.

The man sat opposite Addison and did not at all look happy – to say the least. "No, not this time." His face stiffened further, but not with resolution or strength, rather an emotion Sara could not read in that dark room. "I am Captain Reilly, this vessel's CO. You are Sara Ryder, yes?"

Sara's eyes narrowed. This was almost certainly the man who had had a finger on the button, and pushed it. Any memory of the Finn was forgotten. "Yes." Any leftover of her usually happy demeanour that may have survived the day dissipated.

"And you are Alec Ryder?" He looked at the older man, who in turn averted his eyes.

Sara looked over her shoulder. She was almost as upset with her father as she was with the Captain. Had it not been for him, the family she cared for may yet have lived. "My father." Sara continued to stare at the mentally absent man. The Captain watched her gaze.

"Is something wrong with him?"

"Almost certainly."

The Captain quashed that line of questioning, evidently finding nothing of value, or wary of starting another spout in the tiny room. "And this one? She seemed livelier earlier."

"You were watching?" The Captain nodded. "That would make sense." Sara's tone was bitter. In the hours between the first interrogation and this return, their situation had grown more heavily upon her mind. They were captives of a military force, professionals. There would be no shooting their way out, no bribes or ransoms. For them, this was likely the end of their free lives.

The Captain intertwined his fingers, cleared his throat, evidently ready to start discussing and not simply talking. "We have no interest in your human cargo." Sara watched him resolutely. Her red hair, large but sharp blue eyes, strong eyebrows… in another circumstance, she may have looked like a child. But between her frustration and cynicism, she appeared only angry, even if she tried to hide it. "If you cooperate with our demands, you three will be released. Further, we don't intend to impound your crew. We want your ship, and in exchange are willing to resettle you."

Sara raised an eyebrow, sceptical as she was. " _All_ of us? All 20,000?"

"The UNSC shifts millions of people from planet to planet at a time."

"I think you're kind of missing the point of our mission. Exploration and colonisation is _the_ goal. We don't want to just resettle somewhere. Even if I believed that 'promise'." She made air quotes as she said so, and briefly wondered why she was the one doing the talking.

The Captain breathed in sharply and looked at a folder on the desk, flipping the page over. Time to change topic and no doubt return later. "Your claims to be from the… _Milky Way_ , are difficult to believe."

"The other woman said as much. You want to know what I think happened?"

The Captain nodded ever so slightly.

"Well - we left the Milky Way 600 years ago. Believe it or not, it happened. Anyway, things can change a lot in that time. In the 600 years before we left, humans advanced from dirt-farming and wooden boats to spaceships and synthetic meat. If we got turned around without realising, we might have ended up back here. We're in our own future, stuck in the Milky Way all this time. Then again, your Finn didn't really want to give me any details to confirm that. She didn't even give me the _date_."

"I'm afraid your explanation doesn't hold water." He once more ignored all mention of the woman.

"No?" Addison finally spoke up, interested.

"No. 600 years ago, we were dropping the first atomic bombs and fighting over oil. The year is not 2700, and you did not depart in the 2170s as you believe - it's 2551."

Addison and Sara shared a look for but a split second. Something was deeply wrong.

"Further, there is no friendly cooperation or mixing between alien species here, unlike your debrief statements . Nor are there any of the alien species you mentioned from your own time. We have found no 'element zero' as of yet, have no 'mass effect fields', and no AI ban has ever existed in our past." He thought to the important details his 2IC had picked out for him. "Our civilisation is at war with alien life. If people heard you promoting or even discussing interspecies relations, they would beat you to within an inch of your life, _at best_. So don't. The UNSC doesn't want you dead."

Sara, angry as she was, saw no threat in the man's eyes. It was a pure statement of disturbing fact. She nodded, almost certainly letting a look of worry and shock flash across her face. Those Marines hadn't been prudes like she thought upon seeing their reactions. Disgust. They had been looks of pure disgust. She had never seen such a reaction to alien life before.

 _What fuckin' kind of a war are these guys fighting_ , she wondered. Or were they all just horrible racists? Neither, she realised, was mutually exclusive.

"Anyway, this question of origin is a problem to be solved another time. I need something from you three if you want to remain on the right side of the UNSCN."

Addison and Ryder looked at him. "This is the 'right side'?"

The Captain ignored Sara. "We need your ship and accompanying schematics. Originals, description of the manufacturing processes, electronics, et cetera. With your help, your _tech_ , we could save a lot of lives in this war."

Sara was surprised. "Why do you need our help? You have our ship."

"No," he said, leaning back in his chair. "We don't. Your friends pulled a manoeuvre and went FTL before anybody could stop them."

A rictus crossed Ryder's face, the first smile, of a sort, since she had woken up that morning. "Hah, let them get away?"

"Yes."

"Then why should we help? If they got away, then good. If they forget about us? Even better - nobody risks their lives on an impossible rescue mission." Addison looked deeply perturbed by the words Sara spoke.

The Captain sighed. "I appreciate that you think of us as the enemy. I almost blew up your ship. But we need your help." There was no pleading in his voice.

"And if you don't get it?"

"I hand you over to the men who _make_ you comply."

"Now that was a threat."

"If I must make it, then I will. This is not for me; this is for the very survival of the human race. A race which you, one way or another, wherever you are from, are a part of."

"Little dramatic, no?" Sara asked.

"No. I quite seriously mean the very survival of our species. This is a war of extinction. Extermination." Sara saw a patriotic fire building in its place, heard it rinse through his voice.

 _Oh boy_.

"For the last thirty years, our enemy has destroyed every human world it can find: glassed them from space until the atmosphere is unbreathable. I've seen that myself." There was a moment of silence, a narrowing of eyes, a fearful expression on Addison's face. Even Alec Ryder paid some attention. "Human cities used as hunting grounds, to practice shooting or taste human flesh - on men, women and children alike. Rivers of silicone with millions of melted human beings sweep through every city from the capital of the next system over, to the 600 worlds beyond that."

"Bullshit." Sara didn't want to believe it. "That's just what ancient histories about Mongol atrocities said, with a modern spin."

"Trust me, Sara Ryder, you'd rather face the Mongol Horde a million times over with only your skivvies and a stick, than fight a on a single world invaded by the Covenant."

Sara's eyes narrowed at the realisation he may be telling the truth. You'd either have to be the best liar in the world to make those claims, or…

"There is ample evidence. Do you want to believe it?"

"No." Sara had already had a bad day. She didn't want to top it off by finding out the Initiative had just entered some kind of dystopian hell.

"Tough. I'm going to make you. Marine!" Both of the guards behind him snapped a salute and stood straighter than one could imagine possible. "Get me a laptop."

"Aye Captain!" One hopped to, running out of the room and down the hallway outside.

"You," he turned to the remaining one. "Remove Mr Ryder and Ms Addison from the room, to the brig." Sara was about to complain before Reilly interjected her. "They will be treated as POWs, no harm will come. They are not cooperating however. They do not need to remain."

The other Marine sounded in the affirmative, and started at his task. The two older figures were more cooperative with their prison escort than with the Captain.

* * *

Ten minutes later, after Addison and old Ryder had been forced from the room, Sara was left sitting opposite Captain Reilly, a closed laptop between them, the same marine behind, looking also a much worse for wear. The day had kept piling and piling atop her.

Sara knew then how Addison had felt, with her eyes glued not to the lemon, but the table, the blank grey paint behind it. She grabbed another lemon half, biting into the flesh and feeling the sour juices burn her mouth. She needed the distraction.

"Do you believe now?"

"Mmm." She struggled to reply through the burning. "Yeah." Her eyes watered and mouth salivated. "Yeah I do. Good lemons by the way." Absentminded deflection.

"Hmm. When I first saw those videos, a quarter of a century ago, I didn't want to believe it. Everything I knew about the world, shattered in a second. Back then, alien life was just animals you found at a zoo on Earth, a little plaque telling you what far corner of the galaxy they were from.

"Then, one day, the world becomes a nightmare from a film, a game. The surreal feeling that an alien invasion isn't just fiction, it is truth, and it is worse than fiction could ever describe. And it is out there, coming closer every day."

"Yeah. I feel a bit sick, do you mind-"

"Even in the smallest sense, you now know how tens of billions of people feel every day. How tens of billions of people have felt in the last quarter-century, their every day spent in the terror that they shall soon be snuffed out in the most horrible of ways, that so will their families, their friends, their history and culture – their very species."

Sara felt sick from listening, trying to imagine the incomprehensible pain inflicted on uncountable people, thankfully failing.

"So. Do I need to ask again? Will you help, now that you know what is out there?"

Sara continued to hang her head in horror. She shook her head. "I want to know one thing before I decide."

"I'll try to answer."

"Why did you shoot at us? So many died because of what _you_ did." If she agreed straight away, she may not ever have another chance to ask. But in the end, she knew she would. Detestable or not, the Captain was not the human race. And humanity deserved to exist, as did all other species.

"They were the first human beings I've killed, and I'm sorry to have done it."

"Why do it then? We did nothing wrong."

"You may not like this answer, but I did it because I was ordered to."

Sara looked up, searching his eyes for more. "Is that it? That's all?"

Captain Reilly nodded slowly, cocking his head to one side. "Yes. I won't give any excuses. I was ordered to destroy or capture your vessel. I gave an opportunity to surrender. When it was not responded to, I fired, with intent to disable. After that, I gave another opportunity to surrender, and you did."

Sara took a few whole minutes to consider his words. They both sat in silence, the returned Marines behind the Captain equally stoic and silent. Reilly leaned back in his chair, stroking his grey beard, watching Sara.

Eventually she broke the silence. "Can't say I would have followed those orders, but… I guess I've not lived in this nightmare world long enough. I'd probably break too."

"Feel fortunate. You may have a way out if you ever get your ship back. The rest of us must stay, fight, and die."

Ryder did not feel fortunate. She felt disgusted, horrified, surreal – just as the Captain said he had felt. They had left the relative comfort of the Milky Way only to find themselves in some fresh new hell. She thought of the 100,000 men and women, humans and aliens, in the Initiative. None of them deserved this death, this world.

"I help you… and you help us? We give you what you want - and then you let us bug out, go back to wherever we came from?"

"I'll try to make that an option, Ryder. It's not in my hands. Though know this: the man in charge, Joseph Harper, is a reasonable one." That was better than leaving the rest of the Initiative to their fates, Sara thought. Out there, alone in a hostile galaxy, the Arks had no idea what they had got themselves into.

"All right, I'll hold you to those words."

* * *

"Admiral Harper, priority transmission from Captain Reilly."

Harper leaned forward from the back of the _Canberra_ 's bridge. "Put him through." Harper heard a buzz in his earpiece. "Captain Reilly?"

"Yes Admiral. I have good news. One of the prisoners has agreed to cooperate."

"Fine work son. What have you got?"

"She's given us access to a personal computer of hers. We didn't find it initially, it was embedded in her skin. We pulled it out and it's got good SIGINT, new technology too. I've already sent a copy of everything to the _Chivalry_." He was referring to the ONI prowler attached to the fleet. "Most importantly, it has a map relative to what they have been navigating by. It doesn't have the location of the escaped ship on it, or any of the other ships in their group."

"The ones with the…" he whispered, conscious of the many as of yet unawares men and women around him. " _Aliens_? Mentioned in your debrief?"

"Yes… aye Admiral. But the prisoner _did_ remember the partial coordinates of one of the ship from a conversation she had earlier today apparently. We talked through it and figured it out. Where they land when comparing charts…"

"Spit it out son."

"Epsilon Indi IV, CE-309-8d."

"... _Shit_. Harvest."

"Aye Admiral."

"Well, we may find a lead yet to track the ship we're looking for. If not, though, and desperate measures call - well, good thing the 5th Fleet is already assembled." Harper slouched back further, praying to God it wouldn't come to that. To Harvest. "You've done good work son. Get a coffee, sit back. We'll let you know where we're headed soon enough. You're being assigned to 5th Fleet."

"One moment Admiral, there is another matter."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yes. The prisoner has had her armour removed for disassembly and examination. Apparently, it has personal shielding."

"Hold on." Harper straightened out. "Did you say what I think you just said?"

"Aye admiral. We also still have their shuttle, and its pilot. Neither I nor the prisoner know what special tech, new to us, might be found aboard, but there doesn't seem to be anything blocking us from retaining it"

"Alright Captain Reilly. Alright. You have just made my day a little bit brighter. Shine through this ordeal and I'm putting a fat medal on your chest. Now get the armour and the shuttle over to the _Canberra_ , stat. Pilot too. And the omnitoo…l." Crap. "Harper, over and out." He quickly ended the call.

The Fleet Admiral rested again, removed his ear piece, and let it hang off his neck. While some good may have come of the day after all, he cursed his mistake in saying too much to the Captain. Harper had never been particularly good at lying or playing politics, not like the rest of the chiefs.

* * *

Note: The next few chapters will feature M content and so this story will move to M rating. Just change your filters if you don't see the story anymore, it will not have been removed.


	5. Mazarbul

**Unknown Hours, Unknown Date (Unknown Calendar) \ Abandoned Salt Mine, under Unknown Mountain Range, Unknown Planet/System.**

Avitus Rix sat atop an old, dusty white crate, his head in his hands. Everything had gone to the varren. He was tired, nay, exhausted. Blood from friend and foe alike caked his armour, some of it days old. Bandages had been wrapped around his mandibles, stopping the bleeding from shrapnel wounds. His helmet lay somewhere, far above him, melted, fused to a corpse. They had no more medigel.

A spectre for much of his adult life, he had known better than most the terrible nature of battle. He had come to dread the sound of gunfire, the hissing of metal as it passed all around his ears. He knew that a gunfight should be the last resort of a good spectre, that words, politics, and money were almost always enough to coerce a problem out of existence, more permanently than bullets could.

But this was different. This was not a gang shoot out, this was not a mercenary squad on a warlord's payroll. This was something else entirely, nothing like Avitus had ever experienced. Nothing that _any_ living turian had experienced.

A distant rumble shook dirty white salt flakes from the ceiling, nothing big enough to harm. They hit Avitus, bounced off his armour and harmlessly covered his head.

It was time to get going. Deeper and deeper into the pit of despair.

Hushed commands echoed down the dark round passages. As Avitus wearily collected his rifle from the floor in front of him, a bright white beam cut through the dim room, lit only by the tiniest of yellow lamps. And so there died the natural night vision of Avitus.

"Halt!" The order was not directed at the ex-spectre. He stood and turned to the figures. Though the light was too bright to see past properly, he recognised the silhouettes as those of his own kind. "Avitus! Sir, I thought you had died!"

"No. But I came close."

"What are you doing down here, sir?" one of the other turians asked. Both Avitus and the friendly squad approached each other, closing the gap and dimming torches.

"I came to get some rest and aid with Fredericus' squad. They left not too long ago, deeper into the mine. I intend to follow them." The squad leader nodded grimly to him.

"We understand sir. How many are left?"

"I have no idea. Can't be many though."

The squad looked as exhausted as Avitus. He saw exceedingly few spare thermal clips for their rifles. Soon, they would start having to use air-cooling, and it wouldn't be long after that that weapon internals started melting.

Avitus saw no way out for the turians. They were trapped, destined to die in the white abyss, hunted mercilessly. The squad leader noticed the pain on Avitus' face, but said nothing of it. This was a pain every man there felt, and had to deal with as best they knew - alone.

The squad leader, Dispactaro, for one had not given up hope quite like his superior had. In fact, he had a plan. He had not believed they could pull it off, the five men, not as they were and with so little firepower. But with a spectre… if they could just scavenge some enemy weapons and grab a few stragglers, they could try to go out achieving something.

As Avitus began to walk away, the squad leader called after. "Sir!" Avitus stopped dead in his tracks, thinking he was about to be accused of cowardice. One distraught man had already done the same, not appreciating the value of a tactical retreat.

Avitus, however, was in fact about to be treated to the last piece of personal initiative which existed amongst the ranks of the remaining turians.

"Sir, we don't want to go down there. We want to fight out way back up." The man raised a finger to the ceiling.

"What do you mean? That's impossible. Don't you remember the last days of fighting?"

"We do. All of us do. But if we keep going like this, we'll all end up dead at the bottom of a salt pit. This mine has to end at some point, and so do our numbers, our munitions."

"That's the way of the world," Avitus said, looking away from the makeshift squad. "Sometimes you get unlucky. This is one of those times."

"So, what's your plan sir? Sit here and die?"

"Fight to the end. Maybe, by some slim chance in hell, we fight until the other Arks manage to send someone here."

"You know that will never work. Think how fast our own was obliterated." It was true. A cloud of vapour and loose shrapnel was all that remained of almost 19,000 turians and their lifeline vessel.

Avitus looked at the squad leader more intensely, eyes still narrow from sleep deprivation. "Then what do you propose we do?"

The leader looked to his men for reassurance. They were all onboard, they just needed to know they had a chance before throwing their lives at it. They all gave him approving looks.

"We want to get back to the surface, to the first facility we landed at. There was a satellite dish there, I remember, intact."

Avitus huffed. "And you think it will still be by the time you get up there?"

"That's a chance we're willing to take, sir," one of the men responded.

"Indeed it is," the leader said. "If we can power it up, we can beam a message out there, two if we have time."

"Out where?" Avitus asked.

"Space, sir. Think about it, there's no way this was a homeworld. Only a single small city on the entire planet and a single mine? That sounds like it could be any of the planned colonies back in the Milky Way."

"So you want to contact the people who used to own this place?"

"Yes, and more importantly, warn away the other Arks. Warn them of what's out there. _Not_ to come here, looking."

Avitus closed his eyes and thought hard, also letting the relief of the simple act wash over him. He was so tired. "What makes you think these people can help? Seems they all got it handed to them." Every one of them had seen the vast sea of silicone and glass that covered the surface of the planet.

"I don't know, but we all can hope. If it's the choice between dying doing - _believing_ in something, or just waiting to be snuffed out down there… we know which one we'd like to die doing."

Avitus, despite himself, agreed. But like all living creatures, he still possessed the innate desire to cling onto life. Like the others, he wanted to know if what was proposed was feasible. If not, why bother when they could have a few hours life more?

The realisation struck that he didn't even know how long they'd been down there, tasting salt every time they licked their mouths. Their new enemy had EMPd them the moment they hit the planet. Most omnitools had been non-functional for quite some time, and those that worked, did so only sporadically and often unreliably.

"Can- can…" Avitus coughed, hard. Something in the air made breathing difficult. "Can it be done?"

"We think so. With you, that is. We've been waiting for a good opportunity to act, and you're it sir. You're a spectre. Or you were."

Avitus stared at them. He wanted to tell them that meant nothing, that he was exhausted, he wasn't the force multiplier they needed. But in the end, he acquiesced. He wanted to bring the pain, the waiting, the fighting, to a quick end.

"Alright."

* * *

Muz Buz walked down the round passage, kicking an oddly shaped salt chunk and following after it, head hanging down. He wished he didn't have to patrol alone, it was a death sentence if anything came up on him. But then again it was better than being in the thick of the fighting down below. The rest of his friends were probably going to die by the day's end.

A burst from a rifle tore through the grunt's head and mask, splattering luminescent blue blood and methane gasses on the white walls and floor. Death sentence indeed.

The haggard squad waited a moment for the sound of footsteps and then, contented, advanced steadily. One squaddie eagerly scooped up the bright, circular weapon the stubby little creature had carried. He eyed it, gave it a once-over, before contenting himself he probably knew how to fire it if needed. They were almost out of thermal clips.

The makeshift unit, now 10-strong after collecting four more stragglers, had fought a brief but intense battle at the entrance to one of the elevators on a lower level. A lot of ammo had been expended fighting not very many foes, but that was to be expected when an essentially militia-like force was going up against fanatic professionals. Avitus was just surprised nobody had received anything more than shrapnel wounds. He supposed it was a matter of luck, and did not believe they would remain lucky for much longer. Though the main thrust of the attacking forces was now below them, there were still more than enough patrols and reinforcing groups above them to cause serious trouble.

The squad continued through the tunnels, following plain black arrows and lines, now thoroughly faded, which had so far guided them around the major corridors successfully. Avitus had no idea who had made this place, what they had been like. But he was damn glad they at least planned it out well.

A moment later the squad came to another corner, around which they heard a horde of crunches and voices coming their way. More enemy soldiers. The squad fanned out as much as they could in the tunnel, some taking cover behind old metal machines and uncut outcrops. They readied themselves. If the enemy turned the corner without taking precautions, they would be massacred by the ambushing force.

Unfortunately, they did not. A single beak-nosed creature hopped out from behind the corner, a translucent blue shield brought to bear ahead of it and one of the green small arms in its other hand. It started to squawk. Avitus thought about just how ugly it looked, before shooting. The rest of the squad followed suit.

Though the shield was powerful, and deflected most of the incoming fire, it could not deflect the raw force of the impacts, only absorb them. After a second, the creature's arm was thrown back from the sheer force of fire laid against it, and its body was totally perforated. A smoking corpse collapsed in a bloody, intestinous mess on the dirt.

The squad booted up their flashlights on full power when the next enemies turned the corner, intending to blind their foes. They succeeded, and the twenty or thirty stumpy little creatures could barely see ahead of them. Of course, they didn't need to. The front rank went down almost immediately, but the second rank fired over corpses, and the third from between the shoulders of those ahead of them.

The rapidity with which they pulled the triggers on their weapons, and the volume of fire they pumped out, cut down at least two men that Avitus could see, before they could even react and duck into cover.

Behind the stumpy fellows followed the massive, lean ones in blue and red armour, around three of four. Their own weapons, two-pronged and blue, were fully automatic. Another dozen of the beaked-creatures advanced between their taller and shorter colleagues, creating a protective phalanx for the clearly superior species.

It was an imposing sight, but the stumpy aliens had, surprisingly, not been too much of a problem in the immediate seconds after their opening salvo. Some lost control of their weapons, and shot into the backs of others, sending methane tanks flying through the air. Others overheated their guns through indiscipline, while a few charged their bolts to create one massive bolt which, when unleashed, left the gun expelling radioactive fumes and heat directly onto the hands of the user.

Needless to say, it was something of a circus in the front ranks. Professional soldier some were not. With all the confusion, the remaining stumpies (those not killed by friendly fire) were quickly dispatched with a hail of automatic fire from the surviving turians. More blood splashed, some impacting on and sliding off the bright round shields which advanced behind them in a gory, Pollock-like display.

The struggle continued. While the beaked-creatures wildly fired their weapons one-handed overs their shields, the big ones behind them brought their weapons to bear, trying to aim past the beams of the flashlights. Some other men too slow to duck behind cover were dispatched by the alien foes – including the squad leader. Avitus felt for the man's death. The one person down there who had come up with an offensive, objective-oriented plan. A true turian. But he did not let it distract from battle.

The surviving turians were calling to each other, trying to coordinate fire. But whenever they managed to bring the shields of one of the big aliens down, it would duck under the phalanx's uppermost edge. The phalanx could not be penetrated by fire, not as long as each shield overlapped with another.

"Men!" Avitus called. "Grenades!"

"Are you crazy?" someone shouted back. "In here?" He pointed at the ceiling above them.

"Do it!" It didn't matter if they collapsed the ceiling. If they couldn't deal with that wall of cover, they would be dead anyway within the next thirty seconds. "Throw!"

Avitus slammed the activation button on his grenade, and tossed it over his head and the outcrop he hid behind (now becoming dangerously thin from the heat of scorching plasma bolts). He heard others shout the same, saw them tossing their own explosives. Avitus covered his ears as a series of explosions went off. He wished he still had his helmet.

The moment the shrapnel stopped flying, the turians peaked over their cover. Avitus briefly spotted that two men had come disturbingly close to having their own cover, a thick metal crate, also completely melted from enemy fire. They had been the centremost targets.

As for the enemy. There was a gory mess where a few grenades had detonated in the same place, a pile of organs, limbs, blood, flesh, weapons, and who knows what else mushed into some kind of alien pie. He noted with satisfaction that one of the big aliens was included in the casualty puddle.

Most of the other beaked ones were wriggling in pain from shrapnel, for much of their bodies were unarmoured.

From the white cloud, though, plasma began to fly again. Blue bolts struck one of the surviving turians and literally disintegrated his head. There was simply nothing left on top of his neck, nor was there a head to recover anywhere.

Their barriers were, unfortunately, relatively useless against plasma, even though the bolts were physical and thus could be affected by their barriers. Depending on what kind of bolt they were hit with, they seemed to be lucky if their barrier could block one or two shots before failing. Though it moved relatively slowly, the plasma was a heavy, powerful material.

Even when kinetics held up, Avitus had seen men being cooked alive inside their armour while plasma clung to their shields, unable to be deactivated lest the plasma simply drop onto their body and melt through them. A lesser man would have vomited at the sight, the screams. Avitus had seen many such lesser men recently.

"Concentrate fire!" somebody shouted from the salty white haze. The squad began to target the sources of the plasma bolts and unleash with everything they had. One audible thump. Then another.

Finally, the firing stopped. The entire battle, beginning to end, couldn't have lasted more than a minute or two.

Avitus tried to figure out if it had been three of four of the big, armoured aliens he had seen initially. They had certainly only dropped three. He peaked out of cover, looked for bodies through the haze.

 _Screw it_.

He emerged from cover, rifle sight to face. He began unloading single shots into the survivors, ceasing their screams, pleas, pained moans, and crawling. He found three relevant corpses, and no fourth, dead or alive.

They had won. Just.

Avitus took in the sight of the squad. Fully half had been wiped out in the single engagement, including the man with the plan. Avitus at that point had already had to take command.

His men rose, looked at the carnage and then their new squad leader. Avitus could think of nothing to say. Though they had killed thirty or more aliens in this single encounter, they had lost so many of their own. And there were so many more of the enemy left between them and that dish. So many fanatical, suicidal, well-armed aliens, even if not well trained.

Avitus could not wrap his head around what on earth drove their enemy to use such tactics, to so flagrantly disregard their own lives in the ridiculous wave tactics they had seen used in those tunnels time and time again. Had they went in with an inkling more tactical sense, they may well have slaughtered the turians.

Avitus, for his part, would not dissuade the enemy from continuing with their bizarre behaviour. Even still, they had done more than enough damage to the squad to hamper them.

"Grab weapons off these corpses, handheld shields too if you can. Don't bother with their grenades." Avitus had seen a fellow turian try to use one before, only to have the grenade stick to his hand and completely vaporise the man. He didn't want to risk using them. "Now let's get moving before the ceiling collapses on our heads." He grabbed one of the automatic blue rifles from an armoured corpse.

They pelted it to the next elevator, just around the corner. That group of aliens must have been the guards. But there had to have been three times as many as on the last elevator they had battled over. Why?

The answer was revealed quickly. The last elevator had had only an up or down option. This seemed to have far more buttons, from a level they were well above to the world beyond the subterranean. Not that it was much better on this planet, from his experience.

"Fall in. And let's get this done." The man with the green plasma weapon from earlier gave one last thought for the comrades he had lost in the firefight before stepping on.

One little detail, unrelated to the battle, did deeply concern Avitus: why all the numbered buttons in that elevator were Arabic – the human numeric system.

* * *

Knees weak, Sara walked behind Captain Reilly and his entourage of assistants. A Marine private, Charny, strode alongside her. Both escort and prison guard, Charny was one of the Marines who had patted her down and been privy to the interrogation. Her new task was to maintain the guise that Sara was an ex-Insurrectionist, defecting to the UNSC with critical information. A half-truth. The other three Marines that had been present were under strict orders to play along, not to divulge anything.

When Sara had asked the Captain what exactly he had meant by ex-Insurrectionist, she received a very vague and frustrating reply which gave no real answer. A politician's answer. She was being kept in the dark, almost certainly to keep her cooperative. Cursing herself for having accepted the Captain's narrative at face value, she tried to tease an answer out of Charny.

The Marine followed the Captain's example, stating only in a thick French accent: "I have my orders." It was becoming more and more a common excuse for the silent answer Sara received upon asking any question.

Soon, they reached the hangar bay, where 49 more Marines, the ship's entire complement, were assembled and waiting. Some played a game of cards, others ate, most simply stood around in little cliques talking and laughing. Some, Sara noticed, had a rash on their faces, the same she had been stricken with during her very naked cryosleep aboard the _Boomerang_. On the _Hyperion_ , cryosleep had been a gentle if strange sensation. And it had allowed the luxury of PJs. Here, cryosleep had been lurid. Cold, harsh, confused, slimy. Sara itched her cheek.

The entourage came to a halt around the rear of one of the massive shuttlecraft in the hangar bay, marked F-120. The Marine platoon congregated around the back, conversation dying down.

A Marine Lieutenant snapped a stiff salute to the Captain, and his men followed suit. Sara noticed that, despite some similarities in hierarchies, the UNSCN and Alliance operated on very, very different rank structures.

The Captain returned the salute. "At east. I have a special briefing for you. Fleet Admiral Harper, General Poh, and… others, don't think you can effectively complete your mission without it." Some of the Marines exchanged knowing, interested looks. Such high-ranking figures never concerned themselves with a single platoon.

"The information you are about to be given is classified, top-secret. You cannot repeat it to anyone outside this room. Not your friends, not your families, not any men and women you may fight beside down there. Understood?"

Though most present sounded off affirmative, one Marine raised her arm in question. "Yes, Private?"

"What is the time statute on that, Captain?"

"This is under article 31 of the OSL. Until you are informed of a change in secrecy, you must maintain confidentiality – indefinitely."

"Aye Captain."

"Onwards then. This," he turned back and motioned Charny and Sara to come to his side, "is Sara Ryder. As some of you may have heard, she has defected to the UNSC from the URF. She is the reason we are currently above Harvest."

Sara saw the Lieutenant narrow his eyes in her direction. His fatigues claimed he was R. Schulz. A few others made similar looks at her, though not, she noticed, the other three who had been present earlier. She could tell the statement had not made her very popular with anyone though. They were about to go into combat, far behind what she understood was the strategic front line, on her behalf.

"Miss Ryder has acquired knowledge of advanced, alien technology present on Harvest that could help win this war. I'm not at liberty to say exactly what it is we're looking for, only Ryder and a few others will possess that info once you're down there. The problem – the reason you need this briefing, is that the aliens who made this technology are still down there, in possession of it. More to the issue, they are not Covenant."

Murmurs of excitement and confusion, men and women whispering to themselves, penetrated the gap between Captain Reilly's words.

"These are of a never-before encountered species, and they are under attack from the Covenant just as much as we are. We had hoped to find their ship intact and in orbit, but it appears enemy forces destroyed it. They did not, however, kill all the crew, nor did they destroy all useful technology. We have been in contact, briefly, and they still possess electronic schematics – technological blueprints.

"Your orders are to break off from the main assault, with Miss Ryder in tow, and find and recover their schematics, and if possible, the aliens themselves. Unfortunately, this must be done in person. They, the 'turians'," he made air quotes. "Are hiding out in the salt mines under the Bifrost. Their communications were only temporary, and we believe the operator may have died shortly after the end of our exchange. The satellite situation down there is not nearly stable enough to transmit the data we need, nor do we want the Covenant intercepting it. So unfortunately, you will most certainly need to bring the info back by hand. Everyone got that?"

Fifty Marines shouted, "aye Captain!" Their excitement was tangible. To them, this was new, this was crazy. Though dangerous, this was a real mission that's fruits could be immediately palpable.

This whole thing was crazy for Sara. She had had military training and experience, she had killed before - but that was as a peacekeeper in the Alliance. Not, in any way, had she ever trained or prepared for this kind of full-scale orbital invasion. As far as she was aware, every capable ship in the UNSCN fleet was sending men and craft down to draw the Covenant away from the Bifrost mountains – to give them the time and space they needed.

"Good. Your pelicans will be ready in five and you'll drop in fifteen. Dismissed."

The Captain and his naval entourage left, not a spare word given. Sara was firmly in the hands of the Marines now.

"Fall in!" Schulz shouted at Charny and Sara. They ran to join the platoon, and the Lieutenant spun to address them all.

"We've all heard the news by now. The Fleet has finished kicking the Covies out the system, but that does _not_ mean we'll have an easy time down there." He snapped his fingers at two Marines. "Alessa, Jay, bust out the gear." The two Marines ran off to the other side of the dropship and started to bring large but light crates along. The Lieutenant opened the first to arrive and pulled out a little black pile.

"This gasmask is your lifesaver down there. Harvest has been glassed twice, and had its ocean vaporised. Silicone particles have been gunking the air for 26 years now. If you take this off on the surface, you will die within minutes. In the mines, maybe hours, days. In either case, do _not_ under remove this. You're all being issued a spare, just in case. Jay, hand them out. Make sure they've all got two working masks."

While Private Alessa finished shifting crates, Private Jay handed out the masks and helped with checks. Those not doing anything whispered, no doubt discussing everything they had just heard. Sara put herself in their shoes and easily saw herself acting the same way. Her heart, however, still weighed to heavy to want to talk much. Though weeks had passed in cryosleep, it had felt as though only a few seconds separated her eyes closing and then opening.

The masks were nothing like Sara had seen, at least outside of history books. They had two round, plastic eyes, and a filter attached to the mouth area. They were pretty robust, but still Sara wished they had something more solid like the Alliance used.

The UNSC and UNSCN were full of little oddities and contradictions like that, from what she had seen, and what little Charny had told her in the last day. A massive Navy which dwarfed the Alliance in terms of size, scope, and power – but which was utterly unconcerned with casualties or morality. It did not care about preserving anything but its most important assets.

It possessed some of the most advanced vehicles, craft, and heavy weapons she had seen – but 99% of men and women were armed with cloth uniforms, partial armour, bullets, and old-fashioned gasmasks. Medical technology which made what she had known growing up in the Citadel look like ye olden 'leeches cure all' – but their combat medicine was apparently just foam. Strong foam, to be sure. But it wore out quickly and did not aid healing, only prevented collapses and bleed-outs.

Sara snapped her first mask on, making sure it was a tight fit.

Her knees were weak. _Maybe it was from the cryopod_ , she thought. But at the back of her mind, she knew that was an excuse. Sara was just scared. Those videos Captain Reilly had shown her… she wished she had not seen them. A selfish thing to say, perhaps, but life would have been so much simpler had she not been struck by conscience and decided to help. She would be in jail, maybe, but at least she wouldn't be in that hangar at that moment, wondering if she would ever see a familiar face again. The Captain had kept Addison and her father in cryo. "Cuts down on food consumption," he had reasoned. Sara liked him less with every interaction they had. Only his racially patriotic fervour, infectious as it was (a fact which scared Sara and made her question her own principles), combined with her own bleeding heart had convinced her before.

Now, the videos sat in her mind, reminding her of the horrors she would be facing down there. It would be enough to make anyone's knees tremble. Sara wondered how many of those around her would be trembling too.

"We all have to take these," Schulz went on as masks went around. He held up something barely visible between his fingers. "This is a radiation pill. It'll strengthen your immune system, massively increase the amount of A, B, and G radiation you can take before radiation sickness sets in. Some of you have used them before. Private Fountain?"

"Fontaine. And yeah, LT, they taste like shit. Make you feel woozy in your stomach too, for a few hours anyway."

"Correct. You all have to take one now and another one in twelve hours. That'll give you four days protection against the radiation levels. If we're down there for that long, however…" Nobody had to hear the rest. The Covenant would probably have returned with a new fleet by then.

When Charny had told Sara how fast Covenant vessels moved, she had simply refused to believe it at first. It was no wonder the UNSC wanted Initiative FTL tech so bad. It still wouldn't hold a candle to the Covenant, but it would be something to help close the gap.

"Everybody take one of these now." He held up a plain blue box which presumable held the medicine. "Do not lose the second pill, or you'll only have those first twelve hours of coverage. Now finish preparation!"

They all fell out, but did not return to the casual activities of earlier. They began to grab their kitbags, weapons, ammo, and either start piling it onto their shoulders or into the dropships. Charny handed Sara a rifle and some webbing with magazine already in the pouches. Sara gulped down one of her two pills, without water, stuffing the other one into a spare pocket of her uniform.

"What is this?" Sara asked, inspecting her new weapon.

"Battle Rifle, though we just call it BR. It has semi, burst, and full-auto fire, though pretty much everyone uses burst. Best mode for killing shielded aliens."

"And the worst?"

"Semi."

"Let's make sure we switch to that once we're in the caverns then, huh?" Sara wiked as she said it but it was simply a poor facsimile of real cheer. She was coping as she knew best, through attempting to return to her normal self. Though intermittently, briefly, no matter how she tried to forget, she thought in horror of her family, her friends.

Thanks to cryosleep she had managed to stave off _the_ moment. She knew a time would come when she would break down. Not yet, she hoped. Not down there. Unfortunately, she also knew the stress of battle was the most likely thing to bring those feelings to the fore. She had never been tested before like she would down there. A pit opened in her stomach.

The Lieutenant walked back into the middle of the crowd, addressing the platoon. "By the way: I've been told Miss Ryder has military training, but we _are_ considering her to be an armed civilian. I've been informed she has no experience fighting with or against the UNSC. She will not know, beyond what Charny has managed to impart in the last day, what is going on. And you all know Charny's English is crap. So, keep close watch on Ryder."

Charny huffed a single, solitary laugh out while zipping the collar on her jacket shut. Sara leaned in. "It's not _that_ bad you know?" she poked Charny with her elbow.

"Mmm, it used to be awful when I was first assigned here."

Before Sara could reply, they were being told it was time to seat up. "Everybody to their pelican. In the blood tray!" the Lieutenant shouted.

"Blood tray?" Sara asked.

"They say that's what the troop bay in a Pelican looks like once you load up the casualties at the mission's end. I don't know, never been in real combat."

"Real?" As Sara asked, she grabbed a seat in one of the dropships, the aforementioned F-120, Charny dropping in next to her.

"Mhm, I've been deployed planetside before, never in combat though. Garrison duty, mostly."

As the seats filled up, some Marines began to take standing positions, clipping themselves to the wires hanging from the ceiling. Soon enough the blood tray looked far, far beyond capacity. But nobody seemed to be complaining, and Sara was already aware of her position as the black sheep of the mission. She did not want to start trouble, not now. She kept her concerns to herself.

Sara was at their mercy any way she looked at the situation.

Before the wall of guns and uniforms blocked her view completely, Sara grabbed one last quick look at the hangar outside. It was surreal, how quickly she had ended up fighting with the Marines on that ship, the ship which had been the cause of all her recent worldly troubles. But the Captain had been right. He had been following orders, in a time where orders seemed to be the only thing keeping an all-encompassing hellish nightmare only just at bay. Whoever gave those orders…

The cargo bay door closed once they were all in, packed like sardines. They were cast into darkness, only dim red light illuminating the little army.

The same clamp which had carried her shuttle not so long ago grabbed the Pelican. They felt the landing gear lift and heard the airlock door open below them. Sara's heart thumped and her leg tapped almost uncontrollably as they were lowered into the airlock. Her hands gripped the safety brace around her shoulder till her fingers were white. The hiss of depressurisation sounded.

Sara was happy to see that as the Pelican dropped out of the _Boomerang_ , and as they felt their lungs enter their mouths from acceleration, Charny looked shit-scared too.

* * *

Notes: I am still working out a schedule, I was too hasty in declaring two at a time I'm afraid. I hope you have all enjoyed the story regardless as of yet. I further hope it's not a retread of the ideas we have all seen before as ME/Halo crossover fans. I wanted to write something I've not read before in this fanbase.


End file.
